Posted: 2012-09-28 21:02 &nbspwork has officially started on the 1.7 mv rebuild.the final design layout is still being tweaked, but here's what's going to happen:

these two are hard limits and are not open to discussion. they're Edicts Handed Down From On High as requirements for getting approval on this design.
1) each cluster will be no larger than 3 systems. at this moment, it looks like about 5-6 new clusters will need to be created and named. for example, what's currently known as sag is getting shredded into 6 parts. it wont be just sag, it'll be sag, cancri, hyperia, aurigae [names TBD]....
2) each system will be no larger than 13 planets. this means that 12 systems are losing planets, and of those, 5 are losing more than 7 planets each. which planets will get axed hasnt yet been decided, but i will likely be targeting clusters, like the maurbon cluster in barnard's star. at this point, i am not open to suggestions for which planets to keep/toss.

3) roughly 5 new systems are getting added. there may very well be an open call for community-made maps in the near future, but there'll likely have some strict rules governing them.
4) because the current cluster system has ...issues with localizing chat traffic, and not displaying players in different servers, faustus will be working on some code changes that're intended to allow players to see other players across servers, and to be able to talk to them as well. this will take 2 Weeks™ and you probably wont see the new mv in beta until those changes are ready to go.
5) in terms of raw area, the new mv will be about the same size as the current version.
6) systems towards the core may well be much closer together, if testing shows them to be too close, the entire map will get scaled up proportionally. there will also be a lot of jumpgates thru the core systems, so i dont want to hear any complaints about gate campers (players OR ai), you have options, go around. same applies to invasion/defending fleets, you wanna sneak around back, you can do that too.
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Sounds like we'll get a smaller but more dynamic map strategy wise
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Posted: 2012-09-30 14:05 &nbsp
ok will this be the current one server is used and the others are just there wasting cpu or will you buys be bringing back long range jump drives and teh massive single server super mv of days past.
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On 2012-09-30 14:05, µOmniVore wrote:
ok will this be the current one server is used and the others are just there wasting cpu or will you buys be bringing back long range jump drives and teh massive single server super mv of days past.

Quote:

1) each cluster will be no larger than 3 systems. at this moment, it looks like about 5-6 new clusters will need to be created and named. for example, what's currently known as sag is getting shredded into 6 parts. it wont be just sag, it'll be sag, cancri, hyperia, aurigae [names TBD]....

Meaning that the mv is being broken down into more servers in a complex map-network which will be difficult to gate-camp in and cause less thread-crashing (killing the server process and etc)[ This Message was edited by: Phantom's visage on 2012-09-30 17:04 ]_________________

Posted: 2012-09-30 19:48 &nbsp
It will also mean we can do more per system.

Right now we have maps, which can consist of serveral systems. Sag is the biggest and hosts the most systems and planets. Due to the fact that Sag is the 'conflict zone', this also means the most AI, most players, etc. This all adds up and adds load to the server, meaning in times of action the server has to pull back on how many times it updates the AI whilst it tries to keep up with what's going on. It also means that if we hit the ceiling (the point in which the server cannot keep up with the demand we're putting on it), all of the systems on the Sag node lag.

Having less systems and planets per map, but more maps, means we can effectively split the load up more evenly. This means AI gets updated more frequently, less chance we hit the hardware limits in terms of how much we can virtually simulate even when we lower the polling rates on things such as AI. Most important of all, it means we have more room to do more interesting things with. And if we do hit the ceiling, it only affects that one map, and not the neighbouring ones.

So whilst it may sound like a bad thing to some, it gives us some more performance, and DarkSpace is not the easiest game to simulate (I don't know of any game that even remotely comes close to trying to simulate as much as DarkSpace does in real time).
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On 2012-09-30 19:48, Pantheon wrote:
So whilst it may sound like a bad thing to some, it gives us some more performance, and DarkSpace is not the easiest game to simulate (I don't know of any game that even remotely comes close to trying to simulate as much as DarkSpace does in real time).

I've never seen, let alone heard of, any MMO that does what DS does either. As long as the problem with inter server communication is solved this is a good idea all around, and even if not that's a minor inconvenience for the performance gain. People can always make a chatroom in GCQL and meet up there to talk while in game.
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Posted: 2012-10-01 01:02 &nbsp
would it also be possible to list everyone around like it currently does in f2 (so I can see my team mates in the next system as well as enemies), or will it only be only be per system due to limitations? Just curious. _________________

On 2012-10-01 01:02, Fatal Brutality *COM* wrote:
would it also be possible to list everyone around like it currently does in f2 (so I can see my team mates in the next system as well as enemies), or will it only be only be per system due to limitations? Just curious.

That's SUPER easy for the server to do, it's just X,Y,Z coordinates and the data is shunted around internally. However, and this is a big however, the limitation here is actually your connections. We already shunt a lot of data down the line at users as this is one of the easiest ways to offset the load on the server (also means no hacking, and we're not about to lax this, proud to say the game is near enough unhackable).

Showing you more contacts means updating more nouns which are quite large in size initially, and it means we have to update those nouns, which is continual data. This means we have a realistic chance of flooding your connection to the point where the server is keeping you up to date, but your connection cannot slurp the data quick enough to keep in sync. This is the reason complete damage updates are done every 2 seconds, rather than instantly. This is a problem right now, so adding more has to be done in a very careful way.
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